The college football regular season comes to a close, and the committee has spoken.

Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Alabama finished the year as the top four ranked teams. Each of those programs will compete for the chance to win the national title with Alabama playing Clemson and Georgia playing Oklahoma. As another season goes by more and more criticism is said about the ranking and playoff committees.

Last year’s fiasco was Ohio State sneaking in the fourth playoff spot despite losing to Penn State in their Big Ten conference game. Now we have a repeated situation with Alabama earning that sneaky fourth spot even with a loss to Auburn in the SEC title game. Winning your division is the only way you can earn a playoff game in nearly every major professional and even high school sports leagues. It is true that leagues like Major League Baseball and the NFL utilize wild cards in their playoff conferences so even if you do not win your division, if your record is top in the conference you get a shot at the playoffs. This works because there are 32 NFL teams with two conferences split into four divisions so you have eight division winners complimented with four wildcard teams. This would work well in the college football playoffs if they expanded the bracket to include eight or ten teams.

As it stands right now it is hard to justify allowing teams in the playoffs if they didn’t even win their division when the four spots are so coveted. The committee really needs to expand the playoffs and maybe consider having equal conference representation with spots being given to winners of the power five conferences (SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac 12). With the current format, there are going to be complaints and claims of bias. Change is needed going forward.